Meditation at Berkeley Art Museum

All the posts on meditation (please scroll down to read some of these writings) ended up being part of the content for a meditation and performance at the Berkeley Art Museum by MetaPuentes participants, as a part of the No Right Angles exhibition, UC Berkeley’s 2010 MFA show.

MetaPuentes women preparing the crowd for a group meditation

Mayra Padilla, director of Metas at Contra Costa College, talking about meditation as a tool for self-awareness and how the high school group at Metas have used it over the past two years

A (sadly very blurry!) Pamela Tapia leading the group meditation at Berkeley Art Museum

Cynthia Ochoa (with Jennifer Sanchez, left), reading original work on friendship as a part of the group meditation

After students read their writings, they accepted questions from the crowd. They eloquently responded to inquiries about their writing, their identities as artists, and their connection to the works in the exhibition and our work with teens in El Salvador with answers that wowed the crowd and moved them to tears.
Many thanks to my mother, Jane Magee Mitchell, for taking photos during a very long day of museum-going!

Many thanks, too, to a terrific crowd which included local artists and anthropologists as well as parents of Berkeley MFA graduates and Metas participants. We are so lucky to have the luxury of support from our families and friends!